Disappearing Tray Icons

[Tom Geairn]

In my XPe image (FP2007/update rollup 1/patches current to March 10, 2008), I
have an issue with disappearing 3rd party tray icons.

When the 3rd party applications are first installed (at runtime), the icons
appear and work normally. After a reboot, the icons do not appear - but the
applications are running and working normally (their functionality works, and
they appear in task manager). The icons mostly provide status and
configuration options, and are needed for my final deliverable image.

From prior newsgroup activity, I tried disabling the eventlog service and
rebooting. The icons came back! Re-enabling the service and rebooting
results in their disappearance again.

My image contains the tray icon add/remove component, and the user interface
'Show notifications on task bar' option is enabled. 'Hide inactive icons' is
disabled. I do have 'Explorer\Advanced\EnableBalloonTips' disabled. I can't
think of any other related settings to relay to you all.

If anyone has any information on this issue, please jump in!

Thanks in advance,
Tom Geairn
NewView Consulting, LLC

 

[Tom Geairn]

A little additional information:

The 3rd party applications whose tray icons do not appear are all loading
from the Run key in the registry. If I remove them from the run key and
instead create shortcuts in the Start Menu->Startup folder then their icons
appear. Unfortunately, these apps seem to check for the existence of the Run
key and add it if missing, causing the problem to recur on the next reboot.

So it looks like there may be a timing issue here, where applications
loading from the Run key may be starting before the system tray is ready.
Does this seem plausible?

Thank you all,
Tom Geairn
NewView Consulting, LLC